Building sights in Prague
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Old Town Hall
Prague’s Old Town Hall, founded in 1338, is a hotchpotch of medieval buildings acquired piecemeal over the centuries, presided over by a tall Gothic tower with a splendid Astronomical Clock. The main entrance is to the left of the clock; beyond that is the House at the Minute (dům U minuty), an arcaded building covered with Renaissance sgraffito – Franz Kafka lived here (1889–96) as a child just before the building was bought by the town council.
As well as housing the Old Town’s main tourist information office, the town hall has several historic attractions, and hosts art exhibitions on the ground floor and the 2nd floor. The guided tour takes you through the co…
reviewed
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B
Klementinum
When the Habsburg emperor Ferdinand I invited the Jesuits to Prague in 1556 to boost the power of the Roman Catholic Church in Bohemia, they selected one of the city’s choicest pieces of real estate and in 1587 set to work on the Church of the Holy Saviour (kostel Nejsvětějšího Spasitele), Prague’s flagship of the Counter-Reformation. The western façade faces Charles Bridge, its sooty stone saints glaring down at the traffic jam of trams and tourists on Křížovnické náměstí. After gradually buying up most of the adjacent neighbourhood, the Jesuits started building their college, the Klementinum, in 1653. By the time of its completion a century later it was the largest bu…
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C
Dancing Building
The junction where Resslova meets the river at Rašínovo nábřeží is dominated by the Dancing Building, built in 1996 by architects Vlado Milunić and Frank Gehry. The curved lines of the narrow-waisted glass tower clutched against its more upright and formal partner led to it being christened the ‘Fred & Ginger Building’, after legendary dancing duo Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. It’s surprising how well it fits in with its ageing neighbours.
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D
Radio Free Europe Building
During the Cold War, US-financed Radio Free Europe was the most famous voice broadcasting from the capitalist West to the communist East. After 1989 it moved from Munich to Prague, into this former stock exchange and then communist parliament. In late 2008 the radio will be departing for Prague's outskirts, leaving this brutalist, 1970s glass-fronted building to the neighbouring National Museum.
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